And just because you turn out differently than everyone's imagined you would don't mean that you've failed in some way. A kid who gets teased in one school might move to a different one, and be the most poplar girl there, just because no one has any other expectations of her. Or a person who goes to med school because his entire family is full of doctors might find out that what he really wants to be is an artist instead.

— Jodi Picoult

And just like that, something inside shifted very subtly, so that all the empty spaces in him suddenly disappeared, so that his breath timed to hers, so that his blood sang. This is why there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that just didn’t have words big enough to describe them.

— Jodi Picoult

And oh she had been broken. She hid it well, but Ross knew from personal experience that once you had put the pieces together, even though you might look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall

— Jodi Picoult

And that was the greatest heartbreak of all-no matter how spectacular we want our children to be, no matter how perfect we pretend they are, they are bound to disappoint. As it turns out, kids are more like us than we think: damaged, through and through.

— Jodi Picoult

Annie turned away, her eyes glittering. 'Here's what no one tells you,' she said. 'When you deliver a fetus, you get a death certificate, but not a birth certificate. And afterward, your milk comes in, and there's nothing you can do to stop it.' She looked up at me. 'You can't win. Either you have the baby and wear your pain on the outside, or you don't have the baby, and you keep that ache in you forever. I know I didn't do the wrong thing. But I don't feel like I did the right thing, either.

— Jodi Picoult

Anxiety's like a rocking chair. It gives you something to do, but it doesn't get you very far.

— Jodi Picoult

A real friend isn't capable of feeling sorry for you.

— Jodi Picoult

A robber? In the trash bins? Honestly, Was. This is Salem Falls, not the set of Law and Order.

— Jodi Picoult

A sacrament--like marriage--means living a life better than your natural instincts, so that you're modeling God. And God never gives up.

— Jodi Picoult

As Lacy waited for her turn to speak on Peter's behalf, she thought back to the first time she realized she could hate her own child.

— Jodi Picoult